Editor's Daughter, Student Among Dead

December 28, 1985|by SARA RIMER, The New York Times

Natasha Simpson, the 11-year-old daughter of a foreign correspondent in Rome, was on her way to New York with her family for a three-week vacation among friends and relatives. John Buonocore III, a 20-year-old college student, was on his way home to Wilmington, Del., after a semester's study in Rome, just in time for his father's 50th birthday.

Both died at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome yesterday. They were the two Americans among the 13 people killed there when terrorists hurled hand grenades and opened fire with submachine guns into crowds of holiday travelers.

Natasha Simpson was apparently killedas her father, Victor Simpson, a native New Yorker who is the news editor for the Associated Press in Rome, tried to shield her from the bullets. Simpson, 43, was wounded in the right wrist and hand.

"I think he put his arm around her to try and push her down and that's how he injured his finger," said his wife, Daniela Simpson, who was reached by telephone at her parents' home in Rome.

Mrs. Simpson, 40, had been outside the terminal walking the family terrier while her husband and two children - Natasha and 9-year-old Michael - checked in for their flight to Kennedy International Airport. Then she heard the exploding grenades.

"Suddenly there was a shattering noise as if something were collapsing," Mrs. Simpson, who is also a journalist, told the Associated Press in Rome. "And then there were machine-gun bursts. Two distinct machine-gun bursts. And then silence.

"I rushed into screams and cries, and saw my husband dripping blood from his hand and my son on the floor shot in the stomach."

Simpson and his son were both hospitalized, and Michael underwent abdominal surgery.

At the home of Buonocore's parents at 521 Blackgates Road in Wilmington, the "Welcome Home, John" signs told the story of the day that had been planned. John, a junior at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and the older of two children, was coming home after four months of studying the classics in Rome.

Mrs. Buonocore said she had begun the day as she did when her son left for Rome. "I put the TV on to see if there were any incidents," his mother, Cecile, said last evening. "The first thing I heard was an incident in Rome."

Before long, Buonocore, a nurse, was on the telephone with someone from the State Department. "They said I shouldn't be worried, he wasn't on El Al," she said. "But at 2 o'clock they said he was one of the dead."

She said her son had been scheduled to take TWA Flight 841, due in at Kennedy at 2 p.m. "He would have arrived in Philadelphia at 5:20," Buonocore said. "Instead the flight's at 8:44 and he's not on it."

She said the family had received no details about her son's death.

Buonocore said reservations had been made at a restaurant for a dinner that would have been a combination homecoming for her son and birthday celebration for her husband, John Buonocore Jr., a division manager at a chemical company. She said her son wanted "a prime rib, a baked potato and a Budweiser."

She said her son was in the ROTC program at college and had been selected as outstanding ROTC cadet last year. He was on the varsity lacrosse and football teams. "He was the All-American boy," she said.

The names of two people who died in a similar attack in Vienna were not known last evening. One was identified only as a 50-year-old Viennese man.

The Simpsons, who have lived in Rome since 1972, were on their way to New York for a three-week vacation with friends and relatives. Simpson's brother, David, is a lawyer in Manhattan and lives with his wife and three children in Tenafly, N.J.

"We were looking forward greatly to the visit," David Simpson, 47, said yesterday afternoon. "I was looking forward to seeing Natasha. She was a very decent, kind little girl."

He said he had spoken to his brother on the telephone Thursday to make plans for having him and his family picked up at the airport. Instead, last evening, David Simpson was on his way to Rome to comfort his brother.

"It's unspeakable," he said. "I can't imagine the depravity of people who would do this."